Toronto-Havana flight takes off: Cuba's capital awaits more Canadian visitors
Those involved in Havana’s tourism trade are applauding the first air link between Cuba’s capital and this country in years, hoping it will lead to more Canadians visiting a city they say Canadian vacationers tend to bypass in search of Cuba’s sun-soaked beaches.
WestJet began twice-weekly Toronto-Havana service Dec. 18, with the inaugural flight virtually full, with only a handful of empty seats having been booked by Westerners unable to make it to Toronto in time for the departure from the Ontario capital because of bad weather in parts of the West.
A Havana delegation was on hand to shake hands with deplaning passengers upon arrival in the city and Cuban musicians performed in the airport terminal, which was draped with Cuban and Canadian flags for the occasion.
Airport workers took pictures of the WestJet plane as it taxied to its gate, while airport firefighters sprayed it with water, a traditional greeting for an inaugural flight.
Judith Garcia, a Havana-based tour guide with Cuban tourism firm Gaviota, said she’s hoping WestJet’s making Havana more accessible to Canadians will lead to more of us visiting the city.
“We hope and wish that Canadians will come here with this new flight,” she said.
Garcia said Havana has traditionally seen few Canadian tourists, who generally prefer to spend their entire Cuban vacations in such beach destinations as Varadero.
That contrasts with the likes of Germans visitors, who frequently book Havana hotel nights during their Cuban stays, she continued.
Fellow Havana tour guide Jorge Cumberbatch added he hopes “all goes well with WestJet. They (Canadians) are welcome here,” Cumberbatch added of Canadians, who he said can have a distinctively Cuban vacation in Havana, possibly taking salsa classes, having classic Cuban cocktails and “learning about our culture and history,” in a city that has an old quarter that has received UNESCO World Heritage Site status.
A “mentality of opulence” that led to the building of spectacular Havana structures is visible in the likes of Old Havana, Cumberbatch added.
Ruben Herrera Tobierre, general manager of Old Havana’s landmark Ambos Mundos hotel — a favourite retreat of novelist Ernest Hemingway, who spent years in the Cuban capital — added his voice to those welcoming Canadian tourists to his city
“We love Canadians,” he declared. “I hope there will be more. We are preparing for Canadians.”
Havana has seen Canadian air service in the past but not since covid. Kiran Ramlakhan, WestJet’s senior manager of guest experiences, said during a Toronto ceremony prior to the Havana-bound flight’s departure that WestJet is upbeat about the route’s prospects.
“There’s great demand” in this country for Havana, she said. “There’s a lot of buzz around (a Canadian airline) returning.”
